Rivendell Susie W. Longbolts Lugged Hillibike Frame

This run of frames should arrive Spring 2024. Please get in touch to line up a build!

What's a Hillibike? It's a bike to ride up and down mountains, but without packing the bicycle full of motocross parts that are only necessary if you want to hit a record speed or do dangerous stunts. That's fine if you're at the World Championships in Bromont, but you don't need all that gear and complication to ride on trails and mountains and bad paths while having fun.

Examples of Rivendells we've built for folks can be seen here and here.

Three things that make a bike work well on trails

1. Long wheelbase. Length adds stability in surfboards, skateboards, cars, skis, boats, and bicycles. Hillibike chainstays are almost half a foot longer than your garden-variety modern mountain bike chainstays, and the bikes ride better for it.
2. High handlebars. A higher bar makes it easier to keep your weight safe and rearward riding position on steep descents, and is more comfortable on all terrain. When you hit a bump a higher bar makes it easier to control the bike. Lower bars are marginally better for climbing, but climbing is in your legs and technique, not bars. Just make sure your grips are up where they feel good.
3. Big tires. Big soft knobbies work great, and any skilled rider should be able to ride rough surfaces with 2-inch tires and some care and skill. The CLEM fits tires at least up to 2.4, and the Gus and Wolbis, to 2.8 inches. That’s plenty big.

Susie? Gus? Wolbis?

There used to be a couple of basically identical models with different tubing, but this year Riv are beefing up the Susie and having it certified for trail riding, so it's solid enough to do the loaded off-road stuff you want. It's got lovely new lugs, too!

One side of the downtube says Susie W. Longbolts; the other, Wolbis Slugstone—both anagrams of Gus Boots-Willsen. RIP Gus, your fillet-brazed beauty was too much for this earth.

The Gus and Susie are made with the best bicycle material in the world

RBW frames and forks are made of chromium-molybdenum steel (CrMo)—the best-for-bicycles, most dimensionally appropriate, toughest, longest-lasting, most recyclable, and safest frame and fork material in the world.

Quality

The Hillibikes are hand-made and built as well as any production frame in the world. Even Riv'd budget CLEM has an all-out Rivendell crowned fork, seat lug, dropouts, and head tube rings. Each frame (not including fork) takes one builder five hours to make. They’re all good frames. This might be the last run of these, so if you've been thinking of one and can afford it, don't put it off anymore.

Colours in the photographs may not represent the final product. Dark Gold has featured on past Riv frames, and Sergio Green is on a few frames this year.